Striving to Be Green: Don’t Overlook the Desktop

Technologies promising the green data center have so far concentrated on cutting the power draw and improving cooling efficiency of servers, storage and other enterprise elements. But the constant hum of the lowly desktop, multiplied by thousands, can wreak just as much havoc on the environment and the energy bill as the data center.

It follows, then, that no green strategy is complete without a plan to improve the efficiency of the enterprise desktop infrastructure. Fortunately, there are a number tools at your disposal, some more expensive than others, that can help reduce your PC energy draw.

First, the easy stuff: Just like your father admonished you about turning off the lights when you leave the room, the desktop should be turned off when not in use as well. And not just the desktop, but printers, modems, external storage and other peripherals as well. The UK’s Butler Group estimates that a standard PC with a CRT monitor eats up about 240 British pounds over the typical four-year lifespan (close to $480 in greenbacks), while leaving lights and electronic devices running wastes about 150 million pounds ($300 million) yearly.

Most firms spend a fair amount of time researching the right PC for their workforce, evaluating all manner of processing, storage, networking, graphics and other capabilities. The latest trend is to focus on power consumption. The newest machines are rating higher and higher on the energy-efficiency meter, thanks to dual-core and quad-core chips coming from AMD and Intel. But it’s also no secret that the typical laptop draws only about a quarter of the power of the standard desktop, so it wouldn’t hurt to take a good, hard look at spending a few extra dollars to go mobile when updating client hardware.

And while CRTs are still cheaper than LCDs, the latter offer a real premium on energy consumption. And even prices on the high-end models continue to drop rapidly.

Even in cases where only a desktop will do, a new breed of eco-friendly systems are poised to hit the market. Fujitsu-Siemens is working on a mini-PC that offers improved power efficiency (details are still somewhat sketchy at this point) while still delivering the performance needed to run business-heavy workloads.

Meanwhile, a British firm called Cranberry has developed something called the SC20 Smart Client, said to be about the size of a paperback book with a power draw one-tenth that of a traditional PC. Again, the focus is on delivering a powerful system capable of running top-flight applications.

Of course, how will you know whether you are actually saving money unless you can monitor how much energy your system is using. That’s where the Local Cooling utility from Uniblue comes in. This free utility integrates directly into the Windows XP Power Options Properties and gives you a running tab of how much energy each PC component – the CPU, graphics board, etc. – are gobbling up. It also lets you set how long to wait before the system spins down the disk drives, and even translates the amount of energy saved into gallons of oil or the number of trees saved.

Energy conservation is all well and good, but environmental concerns extend beyond the simple operational period of the desktop. How it’s made and how it’s disposed of plays a role as well.

The simple fact is that many components within the PC are toxic and non-biodegradable, producing pollutants in the manufacturing process and leaching hazardous waste after disposal. Gartner estimates that more than 800 million PCs will be swapped out between now and 2012, with nearly 500 million tossed into landfills.

While some vendors are talking about improving the end-of-life status of their models through such measures as easier disassembly and increased use of biodegradable materials, the most effective solution right now is recycling.

Electronic waste recovery is the latest trend among eco-conscious enterprises, with some prodding from governments looking to share the burden of the growing mass of e-waste. China and Taiwan in particular are said to be a potential profitable markets for recycled materials, as those countries are in a constant struggle to accumulate the raw materials needed to keep their manufacturing economies going.

Recycling is not without its caveats, however. While efforts are currently under way to process materials like plastics and wiring, the repurposing of electronics systems, particularly storage, is somewhat problematic due to security concerns. There are a handful of companies that specialize in PC recycling, but the only way to provide absolute certainty that data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands is to destroy memory systems completely.

There is also some question as to whether PC recycling can be carried out in numbers large enough to have a meaningful environmental impact, and without significantly increasing the cost of disposal. Again, emerging technologies and a commitment by vendors to more recycling-friendly designs will help.

Still, nothing worthwhile is ever easy. Even if saving the environment is not high on the corporate agenda, simply doing nothing means higher costs both now and in the future.